This week’s LabourList column looks at the vexed issue of ‘free schools.’ The list released yesterday sounded like the scheduling list for Channel 4′s Autumn season of real life documentaries rather than an educational movement. But there’s serious politics- and more importantly education- at stake.
For what it’s worth, the concept of the ‘free schools’ which are more flexible than academies has merit. Because they are easier to establish than an academy- a low cost alternative if you like- they spread the opportunity to establish schools to a broader range of people. This empowers parents. The major drawback is what parents potentially do with that power.
So beyond compulsory etiquette and fine dining (!), musical instruments learning and Latin, what are the potential drawbacks? The major one that I see from an educational point of view is that parents will abuse their new found power. Once parents step over the governance-management line then things get very precarious indeed. Parents having undue influence over curriculum would in most cases be over that line. Parental voice is important, expressed at the right place and in the right way.
What I hope is that we can move away from the raw politics of this where one group articulate an exactitude of provision under some sort of misguided notion of formal equality (where fairness basically is everyone getting exactly the same) and another group who romanticise a bygone age of education (in which, for the record, literacy, opportunity, standards etc were actually so much worse than today that it barely warrants any sort of comparison.) Educationalist, Mike Baker, for example, unpicks the arguments about what ‘literacy’ actually means and why so many misunderstand the concept.
There must instead be a public discussion about the reality of education in modern Britain- the different rights and responsibilities of the different players, the type of education that will open minds and extend real opportunity in a modern economy, and ensuring a place for due respect and humility towards professionals who actually know what they are doing.
‘Free schools’ can be part of that mix but there needs to be a far more sensible and measured discussion about the future of education if they and all other types of schools are to give all students every possibility of touching the outer limits of their talents.
September 8th, 2010 at 17:06
Shouldn’t all schools be (made) free?
As I cycled to school with my kids this morning, there were lots of smiles from passers-by, who seemed geniunely pleased at the rare spectacle on London streets. I think deep down we would all like to send our kids round the corner to the local school. Choice has had a detrimental effect in this regard and permitted us to foster baser instincts. It seems that the deeper seated desire of the middle classes is for little johnny to go to Oxford, whatever the cost. There also remains, I regret, a fear of black kids. Those that can, pay, those that can’t quite, move.
If we were not allowed to opt-out of our local communities, it would have positive results over and above the education of our children. I fear that is a bridge too far for the Labour party.
September 8th, 2010 at 17:16
It is precisely about eliminating that choice between moving and paying that Labour’s education reforms were partly about. Note that they were focused on deprived communities. In Hackney, for example,the number of children attending local schools is massively increasingly. Has there been an explosion in the birth-rate in Hackney? No, there has been a massive expansion and uplift in provision in the borough so parents are choosing local schools again. Oh, and there is far more choice (though not yet enough.) And as for the black kids point- I defy you to find a school in Hackney where these ‘returning kids’ are not educated in a multi-racial environment. Some of them are even from ethnic minorities themselves. Whatever next?
September 8th, 2010 at 17:33
I suppose you have to ensure there is broad agreement in our society about the last line in your piece, where you foreground the idea of supporting students as individuals at the expense of any temptation to implement any kind of wider social engineering (whether from a right- or left-wing perspective). I do agree with what I think is your thesis, although I’m afraid, whilst admiring the British system in comparison with for example the Spanish system (which my children all went through first in their educational lives and was mainly based on rote learning), there does seem even so to be a focus through curriculum and methodology on moulding those talents you speak of in a very particular way. Even at the age of twelve we seem to fall into the trap of wanting to build little office workers pre-packed and ready for immediate employment – instead of creating those less formal and open spaces in classes and courses which would allow the students themselves to take a learning path by the scruff of its neck.
You’re absolutely right about the debate we need to have though. We need thinking and creative beings at the end of the educational system – not cowed and constricted office software operators.
Getting rid of student loans – the grandest, and most unseemly, act of social engineering in recent times – would be a good first step, mind.
September 8th, 2010 at 17:35
I agree with every word you say @mil. Apart from the last sentence but we’ll leave that for another day I think.
September 8th, 2010 at 17:50
September 9th, 2010 at 08:49
Thanks for your reply Anthony.
If Hackney has achieved where others have not, this is fantastic news. It may be too soon to tell, not least because the recession must have had an impact on the increased numbers in state education. And whilst Hackney’s state education may be multi-racial, I would be surprised if the relative proportions of ethnicities in the area (in particular white) are reflected in those same proportions in the schools.
The journalist Peter Wilby came up with simple and elegant solution. Oxford and Cambridge should offer places to the top one or two pupils from every school, regardless of grades. The next best universities would offer to pupils who came third and fourth etc. Ponder the implications for a moment…
Private schools would collapse overnight as ambitious parents would send their kids to the worst schools, as opposed to siphoning them off as currently happens. It may not be fair at the outset, though it would quickly become a fairer system.
September 9th, 2010 at 09:34
I’m not sure ‘elegant’ is the right word. Statist might be a better one- it’s essentially a quota and a very crude one at that.
But it is an issue. What if instead we apply a subtle form of affirmative action? Impose an ‘opportunity levy’ on all Universities which would then be returned to those Universities who hit a target intake of students from state schools who are not in the top ten of national performers. You create a bias in the system towards who may not have enjoyed the advantage of others *and* you diminish the incentive for parents to desperately compete to get into the very best schools. It’s also self-financing.
September 9th, 2010 at 09:53
I am a teacher. I do not know a lot about these free schools so won’t pretend to, but if parents want to be “more involved” in the education of their children, as they shoud be, there are so many ways to help improve what goes on in schools other than throwing up their hands in the air and saying “we will have to start again from scratch”. In many schools getting parent to be involved in PTAs or to stand for school governorship is like pulling teeth. At the school I am gov for, the only people who regularly miss the 3 meetings a year are the parent govs. Most schools do not have enough parents on the gov board and for some they do not make quorum sooften any decisions made could be overturned should someone wont to make a fuss.
I have to go and teach a lesson now so I may finish this rant later but for the record – I have been in a plane, that does not make me a pilot. Going to school does not make you an educational expert.
September 9th, 2010 at 11:57
Good points Natalie. There needs to be more parental involvement, not least because there is a correlation between that and their child’s educational attainment.
There is also much more to running and maintaining a school than education and being a teacher does not necessarily make you the best at those things. Parents might not be teachers, but in their midst will be builders, managers, fund-raisers, lawyers, architects etc. If you can get parents involved – and fortunately that is the case at our school – it is well worth it.
(Anthony – Your solution above, whilst optically/politically more tenable perhaps, seems to be a placebo to deal with a very serious problem.)
September 9th, 2010 at 11:59
@Natalie, a para from the original that is in entire agreement with your points:
“Teaching is one of those professions where you are very highly skilled, very highly trained, and hugely experienced and yet everyone thinks they know better than you. As if the stresses of the classroom were not enough then you have to deal with know-it-all parents, commentators, and, worst of all, politicians. And now in the free schools initiative they have all ganged up together. “
September 10th, 2010 at 21:13
‘What I hope is that we can move away from the raw politics of this where one group articulate an exactitude of provision under some sort of misguided notion of formal equality (where fairness basically is everyone getting exactly the same)…’
Precisely the criticism that could be directed at the ‘equalities’ lobby more generally, really.